Earworms: In which Walhydra ponders why she hates secular Christmas

This is Walhydra's least favorite time of year.

Well, actually...for the delicious chill of autumn and winter, and for the supreme sorrow and joy of the year's turning at Yule (see "Yule Blood"), it's her favorite time of year.

But, from the beginning of November on, whenever she shops or stops into Tenbucks for coffee, she has to listen to THAT music.

Ugh! Bad enough when it's Burl Ives or Bobby Helms.

Worse still if its George Michael, back when he was still pretending to be a squeaky clean straight boy with Wham.

When she is in a politically correct mood, Walhydra claims she hates the whole commercialization of Christmas for which this music was the sound track.

After all, the American Santa Claus quickly became a 19th century gimmick of American retailers to get shoppers into their stores.

Eventually, though, Walhydra gets down off her high horse and admits that the music is just annoyingly insipid to her.

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"But why do I resent this godless sentimentality so much?" she wonders. She's been scolded often enough by Goddess to know that resentment usually hides something she doesn't want to know about herself.

It's clear that much of this secular Christmas nonsense is meant to summon the demon Nostalgia (Greek nostos, a return home + algos, pain). Get people to long for their (mis)remembered childhood Christmases, and they will buy stuff and do stuff to try to conjure up those naively cheerful feelings again.

"So I resent nostalgia? Is that it?"

One particular song that bugs Walhydra is "I'll Be Home For Christmas (If Only in My Dreams)." Way too many pop stars attempt this when they finally succumb to their labels' demands for a Christmas album.

Even so, she has to admit that the original Bing Crosby version (1943) was a powerful plaint on behalf of World War II soldiers longing to be with their families. Maybe not so tacky after all.

And then there's that lugubrious lyric, "Have Yourself a Merry Little Christmas." No one has ever managed to squeeze fake cheeriness out of this one. To be fair, though, Judy Garland introduced this song during a particularly sad portion of Meet Me in St. Louis (1944). The story of the lyric makes interesting reading.

"But I don't want to remember my childhood Christmases!" Walhydra cries. "It hurts too much."

"Yes, Dear," Goddess whispers. "That's why it's called nost-algia."


Oy!

Rip Van Walhydrinkle: In which Walhydra peeks out from under the bed

The last time we heard from Walhydra was over two years ago, when she was grousing about bullies ("Nation of scofflaws: or, Teacher's petitude redux"):

She remembers growing up in a June-and-Ward-Cleaver America. Young people were taught to respect their elders, and it was just assumed that people would watch out for each other and practice common civility, rules of the road, etc....

It was simply a social contract, a courteous way of dealing with people in public to ease daily life. Now it seems like people scoff at or totally ignore the contract.  Or deliberately violate it. Or...maybe...were never even told about or expected to obey it as kids.

Now, poking her head out from amidst the fuzzy balls of "extra cat," Walhydra is confounded to find that the nation has actually elected a bully to be president!

"Goddess almighty! If we're gonna go this route, you might as well toss me in the oven now and save me years of worry.

"You can keep the gingerbread."

She looks around in annoyance.

"And don't tell me it's all their fault. We've known working class white men—working class everybody—have been falling off the life raft ever since Grandpa Raygun started his screw-the-commoners revolution."

She blows a puff of air toward her nose to remove another bit of fur.

"All the while that we liberals have been ranting about 'diversity' and 'identity politics,' we've forgotten that defending the working class was the whole point of FDR's party.

"When the fearful folks on the right started digging in their heels about blacks and gays and women and immigrants, we tossed them out as heretics instead of addressing their real issues.

"If we want to take back the America that they think they just took back from us (ha ha), we need to take them back. Advocate for them. Ally ourselves with them. Occupy Wall Street was about them as much as about us."

Walhydra recalls the works of her most favorite woman: When they go low, we go high.

"That doesn't mean we leave them behind. It means we try to lift them along with us.

"Oy. Such a bunch of human beings we people are!

"Now is when the scary fun starts, because we will have to actually listen to those folks. Not their curses and threats and bigotry. Their despair, their longing.

"Do something for them!"

Walhydra scowls at the audience.

"I'm going back to sleep. See that we do better next time!"  

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LBJ quote from "What a Real President Was Like," by Bill Moyers (Washington Post, 11/13/1988)

Sir Terry Pratchett, 1948-2015

Another master has crossed over.

And so it is.

Blessèd be,
Michael Bright Crow

Here is a post I first published about Terry Pratchett on May 17, 2012.

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Back in September 2011, Walhydra was reading Mort, the fourth volume of Terry Pratchett's brilliant Discworld Series. (She thinks it's the fourth...time is weird on Discworld. She's already read The Color of Magic, The Light Fantastic, and Equal Rites.)

Walhydra likes pretty much everything about the Discworld books, but her favorite character so far is—surprise, surprise—Death. Or should we say DEATH, since he always speaks in upper case, without quotation marks? He always appears as a hooded, animated skeleton with glowing eyes.

What Walhydra admires most about Death is his attitude toward...um...death.

As far as Death is concerned, death is not some sort of evil consequence or punishment for mortals. It's just his job. All mortals die, and Death's job is to help them finish the business.

It's the mortals who, clinging to their lives, label death as "evil," as "punishment." Poor Death struggles with the unfair blame...though he always rises above it.

The title character in Mort is a young mortal whom Death takes on as an apprentice.

"Er," [Mort] began. "I don't have to die to get the job, do I?"

BEING DEAD IS NOT COMPULSORY.

"And...the bones...?"

NOT IF YOU DON'T WANT TO. (12-13)

Death leads Mort to the great twin city of Ankh-Morpork, where they stop for a meal at the Curry Garden. The place is crowded, "but only with the cream of society—at least, with those people who are found foating on the top and who, therefore, it's wisest to call the cream." (19)

Mort is puzzled by the fact that, besides himself, no one seems to see Death.

"Is it magic?" said Mort.

WHAT DO YOU THINK? said Death. AM I REALLY HERE, BOY?

"Yes," said Mort slowly. "I...I've watched people. They look at you but they don't see you, I think. You do something to their minds."

Death shook his head.

THEY DO IT ALL THEMSELVES, he said. THERE'S NO MAGIC. PEOPLE CAN'T SEE ME, THEY SIMPLY WON'T ALLOW THEMSELVES TO DO IT. UNTIL IT'S TIME, OF COURSE. WIZARDS CAN SEE ME, AND CATS. BUT YOUR AVERAGE HUMAN...NO, NEVER.

He blew a smoke ring at the sky, and added, STRANGE BUT TRUE. (20)

Pretty much sums it up.

And so it is.

Blessèd be.

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Here is a beautiful portrait of Terry Pratchett and Death, done by Flynn-the-Cat and posted on DeviantArt and RedBubble.

Flynn's own commentary on the portrait:

A portrait of Terry Pratchett, his Death and his Discworld.

He's the creator of the Discworld, that little planet being carried away into space by the turtle Great A'Tuin, with the sun setting on it.

Death, the walking skeleton with an awful lot of character appears in all his books (however briefly) and spends a lot of time trying to figure people out. he's here because a) it's about dying (mental, age, possible-suicide), b) he's kinda a reflection of people (he is shaped by their expectations, so he's in mirror image to Pterry, c) he's one of Pterry's greater legacies, and d)... well, if anyone outlives the Discworld, it'll be Death.

The lilacs were worn in memory of a revolution in Night Watch and are now the symbol of Wear the Lilac Day on May 25th - Discworld Day, and now dedicated to Alzheimer's Awareness.

Because—oh yes, Terry Pratchett has Alzheimer's Disease. And I started painting this while listening to his documentary on assisted dying: Terry Pratchett: Choosing To Die.

Here's a link to a new Terry Pratchett interview on the Late, Late Show, and a link to an NPR interview in August 2011.

Terry's own website is here.

Leonard Nimoy, 1931-2015

Leonard Nimoy sat down with the Wexler Oral History Project last year, his impressive Yiddish skills on full display. In this video, Nimoy describes the origin of his famous Star Trek hand greeting: the Jewish priestly blessing, or duchening.

—by Miriam Krule,
Brow Beat: Slate's culture blog
2/27/2015 

Nation of scofflaws: or, Teacher's petitude redux

Walhydra has been carrying this title around in her head for at least a dozen years, crafting and reciting sentences to herself, adding examples, grumbling. 

At first she was too angry to actually write anything down. Then, for several years, she was too much in grief.  Now she feels again the temptation to be publicly snarky—followed, of course, by having Goddess put her in her place once again. It's sort of a spiritual S&M ritual.

The obvious place to start looking for examples would be with driving.

Walhydra used to play this game on the way to work each day. She would count the number of “strikes” against her, a strike meaning that she lost her temper and cursed another driver. She always struck out before she ever got downtown.

Over the years she has tried various remedies.

With  speeders, for example, she turns herself into the sort of pokey old coot who used to piss her off so much—staying in the right lane with the cruise control set at the speed limit.  It's actually rather relaxing. Everyone on the road passes her.

With tailgaters, she recalls the advice of the defensive driving course the City requires all employees to take: "Slow down and invite them to pass."

(Walhydra imagines all sorts of questionable nuances for that word "invite.")

Despite these tactics, though, the truth is that Walhydra is too often terrorized by those manic stock car drivers who ride her bumper and race around her on both sides if she happens not to be in the outside lane.

"Are they crazy?!!" she shouts.

Then there are the in-town incidents with people who seem not to know the width and turning radius of their own vehicles. They swoop into oncoming lanes to turn right, to pull into diagonal parking or to pass parked cars.  They back out into oncoming lanes.

And they don’t know what that secret little stick on the steering wheel is for.

When she's honest with herself, Walhydra admits she feels disrespected and resentful over these incidents.

She remembers growing up in a June-and-Ward-Cleaver America. Young people were taught to respect their elders, and it was just assumed that people would watch out for each other and practice common civility, rules of the road, etc.

This wasn't a matter of authoritarian imposition of order—contrary to what her peers believed during the "Sixties Revolution." It was simply a social contract, a courteous way of dealing with people in public to ease daily life.

Now it seems like people scoff at or totally ignore the contract.  Or deliberately violate it. Or...maybe...were never even told about or expected to obey it as kids.

Walhydra is constantly feeling offended and unsafe, because she cannot count on anyone to "abide by the code."

"Tomato juice."

"Wha—?"  Walhydra looks around.

Crippled Wolf glances up from the Stephen Jay Gould book he is chewing on.

"Tomato juice. Age five. Kindergarten."

"Oh." Walhydra doesn't really want to go there...but Crippled Wolf was there, too, so she can't very well avoid the issue.  The story was told back in 2006.

Tomato juice.

More exactly, spilled tomato juice. On her favorite flannel shirt. In front of other kindergarten five-year-olds, her first months in public school. Right after her family moved from the only home she had ever known.

They laughed, of course. For whatever reasons, Walhydra experienced it as laughing at her. Her peers had unknowingly introduced her to shame. In her personal mythology, that was the moment when Walhydra became self-conscious—in all the blesséd and cursed senses of that term....

It happens to everyone, of course. That disorienting schism between “I’m unique” and “I’m one of you.” Walhydra figures most of the crimes and sufferings of the human race can be traced to that schism.

What startled her awake, meditating on this, was that she had identified her own particular version of this turn on the path.... 

In her childhood, Walhydra’s line of defense was to become invincible.

She recognized quickly that “those in authority” were teachers. She was an utter failure on the playing field, due partly to non-paralytic polio at age four, and partly to having been shamed by the tomato juice incident....

However, she was gifted with being brilliant, creative and a quick study. The obvious survival strategy was to become a “teacher’s pet.”

This path had the advantage of making her immediately liked and protected by “those in authority.” It had the disadvantage of underscoring the message to her peers: “I’m not one of you."

"We're not still five, you know," Crippled Wolf said patiently.

"Well obviously not!" Walhydra grouses, stomping and stretching to get the kinks out of her back. "What's your point?!"

"You're still feel bullied, and you hate it."

"Huh?"

"Those are aggressive drivers. Bullies.

"But also the teenagers...even the grade school kids you feel intimidated by. The people who don't watch out for anyone but themselves. The one's who take your seat or talk too loudly on their cell phones or expect you do whatever they want at the library services desk.

"They all seem like bullies."

Walhydra sat down. "And...?"

"...you don't feel safe. Don't know how to protect yourself. It doesn't feel like anyone's in authority anymore, does it?"

Walhydra frowned. It was never fun to find out that underneath whatever she disliked about other people was something she disliked about herself.

"Well.... There isn't anyone in authority anymore! Everyone does what he wants, regardless of how it affects other people."

"Yes."

"Yes? Is that all you can say? You're just like my fa...."

“It’s not fair,” she hears herself whining. Starting in first grade, she would frequently come home from some round of teasing by peers or unappreciative discipline by adults to voice that complaint to her father, the Lutheran pastor.

“You’re right,” he would reply. “It’s not fair.”

For years—at least thirty, she figures—Walhydra thought this meant he wasn’t a “good Dad,” because he didn’t go and fix it. Then one day she woke up and realized he had just been confirming her observation of reality.

"I listened to him," Crippled Wolf says gently. "You didn't want to."

"Yeah, well.... So what do I do?"

"Keep yelling at them (silently) as bullies, or be the sixty-four year old crone you are."

"Sixty-three!"

"Haha! Almost sixty-four. Come on. Let's go get a double waffle cone of double chocolate ice cream."

Walhydra smiles.

And so it is.

Blessèd Be,

Michael Bright Crow

Ch-ch-ch-changes

This...

...is Doogie Howser.

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See today's New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2014/04/23/theater/hedwig-and-the-angry-inch-stars-neil-patrick-harris.html.

Jesus and Mo: eggs2

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See The Empty Day for my personal take on Jesus' passion.

He is just there. A historical person, demonstrating in the flesh, through the stories about him, all that a human being is capable of doing when in full relationship with God.

What, then, was so powerful for Jesus’ disciples—after their flight and betrayal and denial of him—that they could know him to be alive for them again?

It was the simple, bone-deep realization that they still experienced the kinship with God which Jesus had enabled them to know before his death.

That kinship was not broken, cannot be broken.

“Jesus knows, God knows. Just wake up and follow him again. That’s all we can do.”

And so it is.

Blessèd Be,
Michael